Ethnomedicine in the USA: Aesthetics of Performance and Organic Wellness as a Posthuman Construct In the ‘Ifa’ Ritual of the Santeria

Abstract

Performances across time have promoted human wellness, especially as we continue to incorporate the lived experiences of healing rituals into our contemporary artistic practices. Audience members practice good physical, emotional, social, and psychological health through their ability to create an illusion of mental escape, enlightenment, and entertainment. The paper comments on a specific shamanistic practice – “Ifa Ritual,” practiced by the African diaspora of the Americas as a metric for evaluation. I shall explore documented research on the performance expressions noticeable in the Yoruba Ifa ritual exemplary in the Santeria and their communal benefits to Afro-Cubans in the USA. The Afro-Cuban Yorubas called Lucumi are believed to have migrated as slaves from the Yoruba subgroups of Africa to the New World, and there they introduced a cultural practice called the Santeria. The Santeria is an attempt to decolonize the impact of Western religious ideologies on their spiritual and social life by performing Ifa rites as a mode of worship and healing. I interrogate how the performative styles and elements of “Ifa” including the divination techniques contribute to promoting the well-being of contemporary Ifa practitioners. Theoretically, the study considers rituals as a fundamental approach to performance and wellness that seeks to reinforce and provoke discourses in post-humanism. The scope of this study is confined to the branch of humanities and soft sciences devoted to prevalent research on the Yoruba belief system and Lucumi Santeria, aiding the discussion of "Ifa" as a post-humanist construct of performance and wellness.